![]() Strangely, it uses WMV as default when first installed. Flac, APE, Musepac, Ogg Vorbis, WMV, and WAV, or alternatively you can download and use other encoders from the site. Audio format conversion: can natively encode into MP3. ![]() Make sure to perform an audio track analysis on your library which will help this process (right click to library tools/analyze audio, or use advanced tools from the tools menu). ![]() Normalization: optionally built in on playback.underscore to space, etc.) One thing I like is that you can set it such that it automatically updates the database to reflect changes to the tags that are done externally with other programs. Tag editing: has everything you would expect from a tagging program, including file to properties and vice vera, and various cleanup functions (e.g.converting tracks to other formats, managing album art, group tag-editing, sending to a device, etc.) Generally speaking this makes for a very intuitive way of working with your audio library. The context menu: most operations can be done by selecting multiple tracks (using CTRL or Shift-clicking) then right-clicking to access the function you want (e.g.One of the more useful features is filtering pane split into 3 sections (genre/artist/ablum) which allows you to check boxes to filter your music, and is very useful when you are trying to fix or manage your library’s ID3 tags. Your audio tracks or albums can be displayed in list view or a very pleasing tiled thumbnail view. The User Interface: is one of the nicest aspects of this program.It also looks and feels pretty darn good to boot. This program is a perfect replacement of ITunes and if you were looking for a single program that can do it all (or at least do more than 90% of what you might want to do with your audio library), Media Jukebox is it. Yes you might have heard of this program and yes, it is now released as 100% no-strings attached freeware. It provides most of the tools that you will ever need to play and manage your audio library, including audio format conversion, CD burning and ripping with online tag and album art support, full smartlists support, a tag editor, Ipod and device management, podcast support, sound recording, ad-hoc album art downloading, visualizations, skins, and extendibility through a wide range of freely downloadable plugins (including a pre-installed Last.FM audioscrobbler plugin). JRiver has clearly stated they have no current development plans with any of the top streaming providers so this and the UI issues were enough to push me off their product.JRiver Media Jukebox is an advanced music manager that has recently turned 100% freeware. I wasn't happy with Spotify sound quality so I moved to Tidal. For me, Tidal is the best compromise and I find the integration with Roon to be excellent. They could care less about local files or sound quality. My main rig is about $4k so certainly not high end or super resolving. Regarding sound quality, I didn't notice any difference between JRiver and Roon on my system. JRiver is clearly superior in all areas related to library management. If I recall, it took about 24 hours to index my library. Roon is definitely much slower in indexing files but this really didn't impact me since it's done in the background. I don't have many classical recordings so maybe that's why I had very few issues. For my library, I only had to make a few metadata changes which was much better than I expected. 30k files and Roon didn't create a mess of any tags so can't comment on this other than to say it worked well for me. ![]() Roon is still quite far from supporting the feature set I need. JRiver has enabled me to eliminate the A/V prepro, the disc player and the cable box from my system, while improving the audio/video quality going straight to DAC and TV monitor. I use JR for stereo and Mch music plus video from BD and Cable TV. It is also true that, though far less elegant or user friendly, the clunkier JRiver has feature/functionality much, much wider than Roon. Occasionally, I discover some really useful feature in JR amid the 90% that is new to me, but which has been there for ages. The other 90% is just clutter for now that can get in the way of ease of learning or ease of use, except I am past all that now. I suspect that is true for most users. But, there have been a number of threads here and elsewhere criticizing Roon with large classical libraries, which invariably require a lot of manual tagging. It's by far the best user experience available. I used JRMC for years and now I'm strictly Roon and haven't looked back.
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